Surely, and I'm not affiliated with the law society, so I feel a bit diffident about speaking about their experiences or expertise. Certainly in Ontario and every province, the law societies are the regulators, and they do a good job across the country. They do have--I think you said it was 1797--more than two centuries of experience doing this, and that certainly is something a regulator like CSIC could learn from.
That said, with that much collected wisdom out there, not just in the Law Society of Upper Canada but in law societies across the country, it seems to me there's no reason that a properly drafted enabling statute couldn't be created to make sure a new regulator hit the ground running and wasn't trying to catch up for four years.